This disclosure relates to tracking and management of vehicle keys and, more specifically, to monitoring the location of vehicle keys using an attached keychain device. Entities with control of large numbers of vehicles, e.g., car dealerships, may have difficulty keeping track of the corresponding large number of vehicle keys. Vehicle keys, a small and easily misplaced item, may change hands several times a day at a car dealership, leading to a significant risk of misplacement and loss. Key cabinets, frequently used by dealerships to inventory and track keys, are a single point of failure whenever keys are misplaced. In other words, if vehicle keys are believed to be misplaced and are not found in the key cabinet, they are effectively lost.
Also, dealership vehicles taken on test drives may or may not have onboard tracking systems, and require a salesperson to accompany the test driver to ensure the safe return of the vehicle. Unscrupulous individuals may copy vehicle keys while on a test drive and later steal the vehicle using the copy. Similarly, vehicle owners frequently lose track of their keys and are unable to use their vehicles until a physical search for the keys is successful, or until the owner purchases a replacement set. Moreover, vehicle owners have difficulty keeping track of their keys in the event that thieves or even the owners' driving-age children take the keys without authorization.
Known methods often are limited to tracking objects in a particular setting, e.g., over only short distances. Known methods include attaching keychain devices whose location is tracked using crowdsourcing methods. Unfortunately, many such methods rely on network effects (i.e. a product or service becomes more useful the more people use it). Therefore these are ineffective for users such as car dealerships who have finite resources and users and cannot wait to rely on a system to secure their vehicles and keys until sufficient numbers of people use the system.